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New submitter LordDCLXVI writes with a review at Tom's Hardware that starts out with some loaded questions about GNOME 3, as included in the newest version of Red Hat's Fedora: "While most other distros are passing up or postponing GNOME Shell, Fedora is full steam ahead. Does Red Hat know something the rest of us don't? Or is GNOME 3 really as bad as everyone says?" Writes LordDCLVXI: "This massive article amounts to a full-blown guide to Fedora 16 'Verne' and complete dissection of GNOME Shell. It begins with an installation guide, with instructions for enabling third-party repos, proprietary graphics drivers, Wi-Fi, Flash, Java, multimedia codecs, and 32-bit libs. Next up is a GNOME Shell tear-down, including customization options and methods to 'fix' the Shell or mimic GNOME 2. Finally, Fedora is benchmarked against Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7. [While the author] adds to the voices criticizing GNOME Shell, he also points out that the extensions can empower distributors to create unique, yet compatible layouts. One of the most fair and constructive critiques of GNOME 3 — definitely worth the read, and even makes GNOME 3 worth a second look."

I'm largely Linux ignorant here, but uh... yeah. Is there any reason a "plug and play" installation would preclude you from doing any sort of tinkering or customization? I'm searching for a bit of insight here. I was under the impression that Linux was incredibly customizable with almost no regard as to when it was installed.

To some extent. You can always install another DE later on, but some distros are more... brittle then others when it comes to being able to customise stuff.

In general, the more plug-and-play distro's are less flexible due to the large amount of customised software and integration work they have carried out. These customisations can also change drastically between major updates, which is fine if you are just upgrading a vanilla ubuntu install from 10.10 to 11.04 but will can really trash your system if you

Ah, I see. Well, I have very little interest in using Linux on my main machine, but I do like it in principle. (I am, unfortunately, a very heavy gamer and far too lazy to dual boot or fool around with stuff like WINE).

Ah, I see. Well, I have very little interest in using Linux on my main machine, but I do like it in principle. (I am, unfortunately, a very heavy gamer and far too lazy to dual boot or fool around with stuff like WINE).

Nevertheless, you've been very helpful and enlightening. Thank you!

If you are a serious gamer, you probably don't want to use Linux, unfortunately. But, for the average user, Linux is great. My neighbor across the street was constantly bringing his notebook over for "repair". I put the XFCE version of Ubuntu on it and rarely see him at my door with notebook in hand. He still comes by, just not with his computer anymore. The only question he had after I showed him how to get to his stuff was, "What was the password again?" I asked him what street he lived on. He told me and I said, "THAT is your password." He's not a gamer though. He checks his mail, browses the web (weather channel mostly), and plays the occasional card game. I showed him the other cool stuff to like sky maps, Google Earth and so on. He really seems to dig it. He really likes the fact that he has not seen a virus since installing it.

So, if you have that person who you are constantly fixing their machine who doesn't use their PC for gaming, I'd highly recommend Linux. Dual boot setup is extremely easy with the hardest part being the partitioning setup. Once that is done, it will repartitions your drive, installs the boot manager, copies your Windows files and settings over and leaves your windows partition intact, if a bit smaller.

In that case virtualization is the way to go. Get VirtualBox, and get it to boot a live CD Linux image (you don't even need to do an installation, just have VB run the live CD). I virtualize a number of separate Linux machines on my main machine (which incidentally is also a Win7 gaming setup).

I'd like to tinker with it, but it's something that become a hobby. Maybe running Linux off of a thumb drive would be the easiest way to do it without messing around with a lot of config, but it's honestly one of those things that's so low priority that I probably

Is XFCE the best desktop alternative to gnome3/unity for PCs intended to be used with a mouse and not touchscreen?

Both xfce and KDE would be good choices. Neither Gnome 3 nor Unity is acceptable in their present incarnations.

I've converted our Ubuntu gnome desktops to xfce, with a little customization (preparing for the 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS migration). The laptop has been xfce for a while. From many trials using VMs, my opinion is that Unity is an abomination - nobody in the family likes it - and Gnome 3 sucks on multi-display systems.

but Gnome 3, with just a couple extensions, works quite nicely for a keyboard-oriented kinda guy like me.

Do you have one monitor, or several? If you got Gnome 3 to work acceptably with multiple monitors, which extensions were helpful? I ask, because its appalling behavior with dual monitors was a stumbling block which I never overcame (maybe it works OK with the right add-ons, but I gave up in disgust after enduring repeated failures).

I just kept using GNOME2 (MATE). xfce lacks some features that I like. gnome3 doesnt work to well for me, especially with dual screens (on a lowend netbook). GNOME2 has work great for years, so i see no need to change.

I'd just gotten the enthusiasm going to use gnome3 but that quickly ended as I discovered that it doesn't seem possible to span graphics cards (for quad screen). I went with xfce, it does what I need.

While gnome shell at least seems the least offensive of the 'new' gui's, and while I'm not opposed to change in itself, I really dont like regressions and the last couple of releases have broken a lot of functionality that used to work well.

Same here, I went with XFCE years ago and haven't looked back. It's not that I am opposed to new directions in UI development, I've just never felt Unity/Gnome Shell offered anything useful. For someone who spends most of their time in linux with a maximized terminal and screen session, when I DO have to interact with the desktop, I want it to be as small and light as possible. I know there are lighter environments, but XFCE is a good blend of efficiency and usefulness IMO.

I use a mix of XFCE and OpenBox. OpenBox and KDE are apparently one of very few desktops these days that can handle 4+ monitors correctly. Even that stock XFCE window manager doesn't work correctly. What a shame.

GNOME 3 can't do it at all. If I load it on my 4 monitor setup (two twinview screens) it gets all screwed up with only half the screen rendering and the rendering is done on the opposite monitors from where the actual mouse clicks are detected. It's seriously broken.

10 years ago this setup worked perfectly. It's sad to see so much software getting worse with age.

GNOME 3 started on my main system in fallback mode. I eventually found that was because virtual resolutions more than 2048 pixels wide were not supported on my video chip, and my dual-head system naturally is wider than that; otherwise I was set, hardware-wise. But by the time I did this, I knew I was going to switch it over to XFCE anyway as soon as I got everything set up. I had been running GNOME 3 on my second system for a month, and all the extra clicks and whatnot described in the article even to do s

I've been wanting to use something that is lighter weight than Ubuntu on a relatively older netbook (the original Lenovo IdeaPad S10 from 2008), but I haven't been able to get the wireless drivers to work on it with either Lubuntu or Xubuntu, originally having tried 11.04, and later 11.10. Ubuntu, on the other hand, had the wireless working right out of the box. Why is it that these Ubuntu variants can break something as standard as wireless drivers? I searched around and tried to follow some directions in

I've been debating moving back (xfce, or KDE) for a while now. I've given Gnome3 a good 4-5 months of good attempts to use, but I find that multitasking is not the forefront of the interface. Yeah, you can "snap" windows to the edges and see more than one, but it's just not the same somehow. Maybe it's because the windows mostly open full screen? Maybe it's the added complexity of having to hit Shift + click to open a new instance of something instead of bringing up the old one (that still bugs me the most...) Maybe it's not being able to "pin" (or favorite) an application to the launcher if it doesn't have a.desktop file associated with it. Why can't I run a Java app from the prompt and make that pin-able? Maybe it's the annoying bottom bar notification? (I prefer mine up top... been trying to get used to it, didn't put much effort into seeing if I could move them back up to the clock...) It mostly pops up when I don't want it to (when I have to click on the scroll down button.) Maybe it's all that combined. I just use the machine as a web browser anymore because that's usually full-screened anyway. I tried developing on it, but it feels clunky to do so.

I recently installed Linux Mint 12 KDE. It required a little bit of tweaking to get it how I liked. The most radical thing I did was to install Cairo Dock, and THAT required a bit of fine tuning as well. Getting the compoze manager to work right on bootup and login took a bit of searching. I also replace the default screensaver with Xscreensaver. That is almost working now, I still need to hook the screen lock into the screensaver, right now it just goes blank. Some say that KDE is a hog, maybe but it

I've honestly never understood why Red Hat would believe that pushing a tablet interface on an OS that's primarily used for servers and corporate desktops makes the slightest amount of sense.

Totally agree. Leave the tablet interface to the tables and the desktop interface to the desktop! When Fedora releases a Tablet Spin, they should go with the tablet interface. I don't understand why Fedora wouldn't just go with KDE as the default since it's still a desktop interface (assuming we are limited to the big two managers, Gnome and KDE). KDE (finally) runs great.

Totally agree. Leave the tablet interface to the tables and the desktop interface to the desktop! When Fedora releases a Tablet Spin, they should go with the tablet interface. I don't understand why Fedora wouldn't just go with KDE as the default since it's still a desktop interface (assuming we are limited to the big two managers, Gnome and KDE). KDE (finally) runs great.

I agree with this sentiment. That's why I went with KDE. On my desktop, I have a desktop interface, on my netbook/ultrabook, I can use the netbook interface and on a tablet, the new plasma active. Three different UIs for three different purposes, but underneath it all, one desktop environment to learn.

Leave the tablet interface to the tables and the desktop interface to the desktop! When Fedora releases a Tablet Spin, they should go with the tablet interface.

While no interface is perfect (Gnome 2 was pretty close, but we had a lot of time to get used to it and improve/perfect the parts we didn't like), I have to wonder how many of the "tablet interface" complainers have actually tried Gnome3/Gnome Shell.

I just can't see a desktop - no mattter how different - that is so dependent on hidden hotspots and/or the Super key to have an interface that is tablet-like.

"the most feeble of users"Doesn't that sum up the majority of desktop users? For real work I use Chakra, on the computers that everyone uses Fedora with Gnome 3. I have had windows users with no linux experince ask me to intall Gnome 3 on their computers. That has never happened for me in the past with any desktop.

I have had windows users with no linux experince ask me to intall Gnome 3 on their computers. That has never happened for me in the past with any desktop.

I've had a very similar experience as a GNOME3 user since June. The transition to Gnome 3 is jarring for someone used to any other "Traditional" desktop environment. However my first experience with it went much MUCH better than my first kick at the can with unity. Unity was such a turnoff for me that I stuck with Lucid and eventually ditched Ubuntu for Debian for my new computer. I can't be alone in that respect--the initial releases of Unity were an unmitgated disaster, though it has improved somewhat

Yeah, they really jumped the shark here. I can sense what they are aiming for, the aesthetic of less to the point of having nothing and forcing the user to jump through hoops so the designers can revel in a blank desktop.

Well, I keep my distance from RH distros due to dependency issues w/ both rpm and yumm, so that rules out not just Fedora, but better Linuxes before it, such as Mandriva. And I never liked any of the Gnomes either. There is one distro called Comice Linux that made Gnome3 look like OS-X, but aside from that, I see no reason for anyone to prefer Gnome. I'd prefer any Debian based distro or PC-BSD along w/ KDE or GNUSTEP. (Would like to see how PBI compares to apt-get, ports and other packaging methods of

Same here. I used fedora with Gnome3 for a while, but it doesn't like multiple monitors, and I don't like the way it's laid out.
Also what is going on with rpms? Every time I play with an rpm-based system I get burned. Badly.
Either the repositories are almost completely empty aside from the basics, or after installing a few packages I end up with a broken system somehow...

I totally agree. I use Fedora 16 on two of my computers but with KDE instead of Gnome 3 and the look and feel is good. Actually I find it better than Kubuntu except that I don't like Apper very much and Fedora doesn't let you use anything else.
When I read the review and saw that Gnome 3 desktop on what is now my customary desktop I couldn't believe how plug-uglified it was. I couldn't finish reading the review. I really didn't like Unity when I used it and that was why I moved to KDE, but Gnome 3 seems to

I've honestly never understood why Red Hat would believe that pushing a tablet interface on an OS that's primarily used for servers and corporate desktops makes the slightest amount of sense.

They didn't. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 still has Gnome 2.Fedora is sort of a playground for Red Hat - they get to test new packages out in the field and find out what works and doesn't work. And what doesn't work will never make it into RHEL.

Because Fedora 15, 16 and 17 are, quite frankly unusable, I have decided to upgrade my Fedora 14 workstation to ScientificLinux[*] 6.2 and get security and hardwre patches ffor many years to come. Because where the Red Hat kids got it wrong with Fedora, they got i

And it's sad that most/.ters won't read the review, because it is truly very complete. At one point you read

Another side-effect presents itself after a few weeks of regular use.

or

I needed to open it on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v to access my DropBox account [...] Back on my desktop, KeePassX reported that my password database was locked

and think "a review that actually tried to use the fucking thing for weeks intead of just installing, looking around for a few minutes and writing about it? What the hell is happening to tech journalism?". Gnome Shell didn't, but Tom's Hardware scored a few points with me today.

I was very favorably impressed with the review. I actually tried to use Gnome3 for a while and gave it up as a bad job, after reading this I've got a good idea of how I could fix a lot of the annoyances I found. I'm not sure I'd want to (as the reviewer says, he had to go through a pretty insane amount of effort to make the desktop usable), but still this guy went to some serious effort and found several tips and tricks I didn't know about. Combined with a really good explanation of the pluses and minuses for a pure FOSS distro on the first several pages and a clear effort to really use and abuse the system being reviewed, this may be one of the most useful and informative reviews I've seen in a while. Whether for a new Linux user or a Linux veteran that hasn't really played with Gnome3.

I agreed with his review as well. Frankly I found his tolerance far exceeding my own when it comes to GNOME3. Pretty much everything he said on the "Why it Failed" [tomshardware.com] page is spot on. I thought this was insightful regarding their target demographic:

So, when the power users are leaving, GNOME doesn't really seem to care. After all, GNOME 3 isn't designed for them. But what the GNOME Project leaders don't seem to understand is that new Linux users are like vampires, or werewolves, or zombies. Stick with me here.

New Linux users don't just spontaneously pop into existence, they have to be "bitten" by someone who is already involved. Average Joe, who needs to use his computer and doesn't care how it works, doesn't wake up one day and, out of the clear blue sky exclaim, "You know what? I think I'm gonna screw around with Linux today.” New users are typically converted by a friend or family member who gets them set up and interested.

Just how does GNOME intend to put the GNOME Shell into the hands of new users? By chasing away its current base with a brand new interface designed to be "easy," and with no clear strategy for acquiring an easy-seeking audience, GNOME simultaneously shoots itself in the head and foot.

And finally:

Using GNOME Shell is an exercise in supreme frustration. After spending the first month with this interface, I wanted to crawl into a corner and die.

Just the reaction the GNOME devs were hoping for, no? I kind of wonder how long Fedora will stick with it given that.

I never even got gnome to start after ugragrading to Fedora16 system, so just went back to Enlightenment17 which goes to the opposite extreme of letting you customise everything while having quite sane defaults.I've tried the new gnome from a live CD, but from the little I've used it I became so pissed off that I even prefer the old early 1990s style TWM (which I used last week). Perhaps the initial defaults should be changed so it works more reliably and pisses people off a bit less on initial use. Maybe

One thing the review left out, but others have alluded to is that Gnome 3 may not be the only desktop one uses. I've used both Gnome Shell and Unity quite a bit and if they were all I had to use, I could more readily adapt to them. However, I also have to use Windows a lot and going back and forth between them is cumbersome.

Under Gnome 2, XFCE and KDE, at least my desktop functions similarly in all cases (menu bar, task list, notifications, etc.). I don't have to think to switch tasks on this computer, I

After a while of using it, I got used to it. I still find myself trying to launch and switch tasks the old way, but the new way is not bad. Nowhere near as extreme as Windows 8. Still have trouble using that, and we have been testing it since November.

That there is no way to fix the default interface in Windows 8, of Vista to run like XP. unlike most other OS(like OS X lion where you would fix the trackpad) or most *nix where you can run everything whatever GUI or CL you want, even X. This is pretty much why I only upgraded MS Windows XP when it became clear that MS Windows 7 worked. There is no way to go back with MS.

Note to bash, but the install summary kind of reminds that MS Windows XP for the longest time could not really deal with mass storage

You think we're bitching about Metro? Wait till it lands in front regular users. I had people freaking out because their desktop looked a little different in Windows 7. They're going to have a fucking aneurysm when 8 hits. Also, people are talking about touch-screen monitors like it is something we are going to have on our desktops. I can see using the TSI for some off-hand UI stuff, but most use is going to have to be mouse driven. It sounds great until you have to lift your hand up to actuate the UI, aft

Can someone please explain to me the whole GNOME Shell/Unity is a tablet interface meme?

Single-tasking full-screen apps with no application menus, and masses of enforced mouse movement to get anything done? Clicking in the corner of the screen to switch windows doesn't cause RSI when using a table, but it's horrendously bad design when using a mouse.

Unity is fine on my netbook when I just want to check email or look at some web pages, but it's a total cluster-fsck when I try to get any real work done; I'm continually having to move the mouse all over the screen to switch windows, and the stupid task bar is continually blocking the left side of the screen when I move the mouse over there and don't quite stop before the edge (e.g. to use the 'back' button in Firefox).

Honestly, the ability to customize the time delay of the taskbar appearing when the mouse touches the edge of the screen is the most obvious and simple feature they could have added. I have always been amazed by Gnome and Ubuntu's distaste for configuration menus. One fully featured config menu would remedy 90% of the problems power users have.

It does have elements akin to that of tablets in that the activities pane (launcher) is a tiled icon display (like many mobile interfaces...and Windows 8), and there's a focus on having single-layer workspaces with no min/maximizing. Really, though, GNOME 3 has a lot of potential once you apply some of the tweaks mentioned in the article, and browse https://extensions.gnome.org/ [gnome.org] for a bit.

Even though it's barely out of the gates, I tried out Cinnamon, a fork of Gnome3 by the folks that brought us Mint Linux. MUCH better than the base Gnome3.

To keep things short, one could say the biggest point of contention with Gnome3 was how radically different it was from Gnome2, moving from a task-centric way of managing the shell to an application centric method. While great for a novice, this tended to frustrate a lot of power users. Cinnamon allows more flexibility in the shell's method of focus on tasks and applications, essentially letting the user pick whatever point on the scale they prefer. It's a good approach - perhaps the best approach.

I don't know if it's offered for Fedora or Red Hat based Linux's in package form, but you could build it from source if need be.

This review, like most others, makes a big deal of there being no dock for multitasking. The complaint being that to switch applications you have to mouse to the corner to open the activities screen and then click on the destination. Is it really that hard to use the keyboard instead? Or just press the banner key to get to activities and click on the destination. To me this looks like a big improvement over hunting for the destination on a cluttered desktop. Do you really hate using the keyboard so much that key+click is a totally unacceptable change from move+click?

It's a GUI, dude. If I wanted to be using the keyboard, I'd use a CLI.

And yes, having to move my hands between mouse and keyboard all the time because they've totally fscked up the mouse interface for no good reason would be incredibly annoying.

You see, here's the thing. Changes are supposed to take what we have and... improve it. When you do that, users are happy and start using the new features and few people complain. But all these new GUIs are a big step backward for desktop users, merely to support a tablet market which does not exist. Android and iOS own the tablet market right now, Microsoft might get a small market share, but no-one is going to be pushing Red Hat tablets any time soon.

This is overlooking the convenience of throwing your mouse to the upper left for accessing the very same features quickly. As one of the 5 instant-access points of mouse interaction (the four corners and what's already under the cursor) there's little difference between that and having a hotkey. It's really not that bad. Once that view is up, other window targets are also generally larger.

Now, default alt-tab switching on the other hand...one of the many reasons for installing a ton of extensions, for sure.

This is overlooking the convenience of throwing your mouse to the upper left for accessing the very same features quickly. As one of the 5 instant-access points of mouse interaction (the four corners and what's already under the cursor) there's little difference between that and having a hotkey. It's really not that bad.

Thus speaks someone who can't imagine users having more than one monitor (nor very large monitors).For one thing, with multiple monitors, the edges don't necessarily stop the mouse. And with high resolutions, you have to move the mouse quite a bit to get from one part of the screen to another.Trying to use Gnome 3 with multiple high-res monitors and multiple windows for each app is inviting RSI.

This is a false dichotomy; one need not 'hate' the keyboard to complain that the feature is unavailable using a pointer. The complaint assumes the feature is important enough to be accessible using both keyboards and pointers. How a pointer provides feature this has been a solved problem for at least 17 years; Win95 provided a task bar that would hide and reappear as the pointer approached. Your 'hunting' characterization is exaggerated; edges and corners are easy to find.

Why is the default download type a "live" CD? Choosing "Applications -> Install to hard drive" doesn't seem at all intuitive.
Granted, I installed on a virtual machine which kicked Fedora into "fallback mode" (no display drivers yet) on first boot so maybe that prevented a dialog from displaying.

I've been using Unity (or whatever it was called back then) on my 10.1" netbook since it was available and I never liked it for the desktop.

But I've gown to like Gnome 3 and, in particular, it's task switching.While Gnome 2 style task switching works well, it becomes a bit painful when you have a more than a few windows in the same desktop.If I have more than a few, names in the task list buttons will become truncated, which tends to require extra effort to figure out which button I want.If I have a lot (an

I cannot stand the childish and immature desktop environments that are being forced upon end-users. Unity/Gnome Shell are both awkward, clunky, unusable and feel like a shameless ripoff of Mac OS X in feel. I sure as hell don't want a desktop environment that restricts what I can do and offers me no customization - that sucks. For these reasons I've chosen Xfce4 on all of my Debian installs as it's the only SANE desktop environment left for power users and those with common sense.

Used Gnome 3 Fedora 16 since release on a netbook and laptop. It is characterized as a tablet OS. Sort of is, but not a good one. Too many keyboard shortcuts. What does a tablet lack? A keyboard. Sure touchscreen keyboard is available, but just one more step away from what you want. So if a tablet OS, it is a neurotically ill conceived one.
I tried Unity for two weeks and Gnome 3 is definitely preferable. Still, it just isn't good enough. I don't see it as a good tablet OS, Win 8 beats the pants o

It is the firt time I find the multi-virtual-desktop thing usable : it becomes very practical to setup multiple virtual desktops for so many different tasks, and it is nice.

I had to customise it a little though, with the folowing extensions, right out from the https://extensions.gnome.org/ [gnome.org] website:
- Coverflow Alt-Tab : Replacement of Alt-Tab, iterates through windows in a cover-flow manner.
- Dash Click Fix : Fix the dash's behavior when you click on an already ru